“Female ownership of sexuality is nothing new, not since Madonna’s cone bra or Salt-N-Pepa’s declaration that their activities between the sheets are “None of Your Business.” More often than not, these sex-positive declarations exist in purely heteronormative terms, with any lady-on-lady action fetishized for male pleasure (think Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”). Times are happily a-changing, though”
“Breakup albums are standard fare in the world of pop and rock, but it’s hard to think of nearly enough that feature odes to women masturbating while subverting the heteronormative gaze. Enter British singer-songwriter Marika Hackman with her third album, and glorious songs such as Hand Solo (“I gave it all, but under patriarchal law, I’m gonna die a virgin”). Queer sex, self-pleasure and a genera”
“Marika Hackman is pictured in a pair of big white pants cradling a piglet on the sleeve of her third album. Funny and brazen, it’s a neat visualisation of the step forward she’s taken with Any Human Friend. Having left behind her electro-folk beginnings on 2017’s I’m Not Your Man, on which she was backed by The Big Moon, she’s now cleaned up her grunge act and is aiming for a pop bullseye. The ar”
“Marika Hackman’s Any Human Friend is a frank, explosive love letter to the overlooked”
“The British singer-songwriter’s third album is a singular, extraordinarily horny, and occasionally bleak pop record largely about the complexities of queer desire.”
